Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: After a 70-day long protest against non-regularisation of their jobs’ status and suspended salaries of over 10 months, the daily wage employees of Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) have approached the human rights wing of Supreme Court of Pakistan on Monday and requested for taking notice against this discrimination.

According to an application submitted by the daily wagers consisted of teaching and non-teaching staffers to the Human Rights Cell of the apex court, it was requested that the court take action against the authorities concerned for failure and creating obstacles in job regularisation despite the fact that they are serving in different institutions of FDE since many years. Currently, the FDE has 423 educational institutions including 20 model colleges across the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).

With the complaint, the list of around 1,700 daily wagers with credentials were also submitted in the court. Sources said in the beginning that there were around 2,250 daily wagers, adding that some over 500 employees quit their jobs after they were exhausted by discriminatory approach of the authorities concerned.

The application stated, “We are being paid a monthly salary of Rs 1,400 which equals to Rs 350 per day while the daily wage of an unskilled labourer and skilled labourer is Rs 500 and Rs 800 respectively. We, the teachers, are nation builders and many among us have qualification of Masters, MPhil and PhD producing our respective school/college results perfectly not less than 100 percent even in a single institution.”

They recalled that several students succeeded in chasing their goals after the completion of their education while the teachers were still being treated inhumanely.

“The FDE and Capital Administration & Development Division (CADD) continued to exploit us economically since our joining,” they regretted.

According to the available information, they are protesting outside the National Press club for over a month. They also boycotted academic classes in all the respective educational institutions. A couple of weeks ago, they also staged a strike near the FDE building located in G-9/4 and got beaten up by the police.

All these strikes have been in vain. A senior official in the FDE said he wondered why the authorities were lingering on the matter as the directorate had shortage of 4,000 teachers in its educational institutions.

In 2009, a committee was formulated by Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khurshid Shah for regularisation of contractual employees.

As per the information, the CADD Ministry regularised thousands of employees in the light of Khurshid Shah’s committee’s recommendations at Polyclinic, Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) and other allied departments.

A few years ago, as per information, the CADD Ministry regularised thousands of employees in the light of the committee’s recommendations.

Besides, in two different notifications submitted on December 12 and December 22 last year, a copy of which is available with Daily Times, the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training also confirmed the regularisation of 63 employees.

Furthermore, after coming into power in 2013, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government regularised over 11,000 employees of various cadres working in different federal entities.

Published in Daily Times, March 20^th 2018.